Friday, June 2, 2006

May was a financially boring month with one pretty big exception: I decided to pay off the loan on my MINI Cooper. Why would I do such a thing when my savings currently earn more interest than I pay on the car loan? Eh, I was bored.

Partly thanks to a lousy month on the stock market, our net worth only rose 4%. It is kind of nice to see that Debt column full of zeroes (yeah, I’m leaving out 0% balance transfers), but I wish it wasn’t at the expense of the Cash value. Why can’t loans pay back themselves?

My wife and I have greatly accelerated our plans to purchase a house. We’re still not sure what we want, but we’ve narrowed it down to a couple of choices. We’d either like a nice townhouse in a quiet area about seven miles north of here or a single family home in a community a couple miles down the road from here. The former would be well within our affordability range while the latter would be pushing the limits. I’m looking through about a dozen new home listings a day and there is no shortage of townhouses, but the single family homes are a little harder to find. The good news is that it seems prices on both are holding steady or perhaps even coming down a tiny bit. If all goes well, we’d like to buy before the lease on our apartment runs out in November.

I have one minor expense coming up to which I am not looking forward–buying myself clothes. While I love getting new outfits for my wife, I don’t feel the same about purchasing stuff for myself to wear. But considering I am currently wearing a shirt someone bought for me nearly a decade ago, it’s probably time to update my side of the closet a bit.